Nikon D700 vs D600

So after moving to mirrorless and swearing that I would never return to big/heavy DSLRs, here I am looking at getting a DSLR! I recently got a Voigtlander 40mm f2 for my Nikon FM2n, and I absolutely love the focal length and the rendering of the lens. I have a Mitakon speedbooster for my E-M1, but that still only gives me an equivalent to a 58mm, which is less useful than 40mm. I have a 50mm f1.4 and a 28mm f2.8 as well, but there's still the crop factor applied to them making them both much different to how they are on film. As much as I would love to shoot strictly film with these lenses, that's not entirely realistic.

So I'm debating between two cameras; The Nikon D700 and Nikon D600. They both go for around the same price, and it's around the top of my budget ($600-$700). I'm not interested at all in fancy features or awesome video. I'm basically looking for a full frame Nikon that takes photos. These are the two cheapest options, but I'm still undecided on which one to go with. The D700 is what I was originally set on, but then I found the D600 and that threw everything off.

I am not at all worried about weight now; if I want a lighter load, I'll bring my Olympus. I actually really like the idea of the lower resolution sensor in the D700 as the file sizes will be smaller. I never print large photos, and almost everything just gets posted here and on Flickr so super high resolution is not all that important to me. But, the D600 sensor surpasses the D700 sensor in every single way. Low light, color depth, dynamic range are all better on the D600. The better autofocus on the D700 does sound nice to have, as I'm sure I'll probably end up with one autofocus lens at some point.

The choice seems so simple; get the D600, it's better in almost every single way. But the D700 sounds so good in my head. Older and more simple camera with less features is really appealing to me. I'm really just buying a body to use my lenses, so a simpler camera might make more sense. Or alternatively, is this all just GAS?

Any guidance or suggestions would be massively appreciated! Thanks everyone

Well, the overall IQ of the D600 is better. The obvious being resolution, but I also found that noise and DR were big improvements as well. The big downside of the D600 other than the autofocus which was "ok" but not nearly as good as the D700...was the viewfinder. Tiny little thing. Acceptable with AF lenses, but I'd never try to use a MF lens on one. The D700 is 95% coverage, .75% magnification, but the D600 is 100%, .7% magnification. Seems like D600 should've been better...but I never really liked it in retrospect. I owned the D600 then D610, and borrowed a D700 for a month before getting the 6 series. I would buy the D600 personally, but that's because I can deal with the AF in my type of shooting, and I never use MF glass. For you that may or may not be an option.

Personally I would hold of until your budget allows for a D750. The D600 had a lot of issues with oil and the autofocus module was notoriously not that great. The D700 while a fantastic camera in it's day is really lacking compared to the newer models. Dynamic range on the D750 is astounding and the autofocus is really rather good.

Pure Photo N.I wrote in post #18546327Personally I would hold of until your budget allows for a D750. The D600 had a lot of issues with oil and the autofocus module was notoriously not that great. The D700 while a fantastic camera in it's day is really lacking compared to the newer models. Dynamic range on the D750 is astounding and the autofocus is really rather good.

I've heard awesome things about the D750! The AF isn't a big deal at all as I only own manual focus lenses for Nikon. Dynamic range is another thing I'm not too overly worried about. My main camera I used for years was a Canon 7D which definitely not high up on the good DR list. I'm basically looking for a digital camera to use my Nikon lenses with. I would be shooting it solely in manual mode, and not touch anything else in the menus, so the fancy features of new cameras don't matter to me.

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